Midland District, which embraced the counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Lincolnshire. The East Midland dialect was spoken by Gower and Chaucer, and has asserted its superiority over all other dialects, which are now but the speech of provincials.

English may be classed in four periods: 1st, Old English; 2nd, Early English; 3rd; Middle English; 4th, Modern English. Of these Old English may be said to end about A.D. 1100, and Modern English to begin after A.D. 1500.

IV. OF OTHER NATIONS.

Besides the Indo-European or Aryan family there are two other great families of language-viz., the Semitic and the Turanian.

Of these the Semitic is a highly cultivated tongue, including the ancient Hebrew and Chaldee languages, the modern Arabic and the Ethiopic.

The Turanian is less refined, simpler, and more archaic. It is the language of Chinese and Malays, and the islanders of the Pacific, as well as of the wild tribes of Africa and America; Hungarian and Finnish represent it in Europe, Tamil and Telugu in India. Turanian may be called a primitive language, for its speakers seem not to have got beyond that early state of thought in which the relations of two or more things can only be expressed by placing the words that symbolize them side by side; thus each syllable is a separate word, and has a separate meaning.

Turanian thus presents a great contrast to Aryan speech, for in the latter the amalgamation of the root of a word and the adjuncts that define and connect it with other words has been so complete that it is often difficult accurately to distinguish the component parts of a word: for instance, the English word "lord" suggests only the meaning of prince or leader, but it is properly hlaf-ord (bread-giver); but in Turanian each syllable is a separate root, and the ideas lie side by side, like oil and water, but do not blend.

V.-OF ROOTS,

By the roots of languages are meant those simple syllables that cannot be reduced to simpler forms, but resist all analysis. They seem to be the original tokens that in the primitive tongue stood for things. These roots, comparatively few in number, can, however, by modification and amalgamation express an almost innumerable number of ideas, and relations of ideas to each other. These primitive roots are of two kinds, either predicative or demonstrative; and by the latter class are formed the inflections both of nouns and verbs. These demonstrative roots are often represented merely by letters in modern languages, but there is every reason to suppose that even the most advanced and cultivated languages passed through the primitive or Turanian stage, and then after that fused their combined roots into one word.

Beginning with the monosyllabic stage, language has developed itself till it has become in the mouths of the Aryan races a perfect means of representing ideas and their relations to each other, and the most subtle combinations in which thought can find expression.

Roots may probably all be reduced to two classes, predicative and demonstrative, the one including all ideas of doing or being, the other all those accidents of time and place which limit and modify doing and being. The combination of these two classes of roots, in numberless variety, is sufficient for the expression of the simplest and most complex thoughts. The Aryan languages, through the migrations and varied experience of many centuries, have combined and simplified, polished and repolished their words, till almost every word stands as the concrete symbol of many thoughts that mutually modify each other. This is also the case in a less perfect degree in the Semitic languages. Probably the Turanian languages, to which some philologers deny all claim to a common unity, will in the long revolution of future ages simplify and consolidate ideas which at present can only be presented separately. Distinct and separate, these thoughts stand side by side as the pales of a park fence; but the Aryan words are like a living quickset hedge,

Languages which have this power of combining thoughts into words are called inflectional, or synthetic. Languagea which have it not are called uninflectional, or analytical. In the history of a language, and perhaps of all languages, it comes to pass that, after the structure of a language has been built together synthetically, and its inflectional system is complete, a change sets in, and the language loses its inflectional character, and becomes in many ways analytical; that is to say, it ceases to express the modifications of mood, tense, and case by suffixes, and uses instead separate words, thus, as it were, taking a step backwards. This is specially true of the English language, as has been said above, and the cause and manner of the change may be traced in the history of the language. English has thus become so far less inflectional, but it still retains in its word-formation the synthetical characteristics of its sister tongues. We have, then, in English a language synthetical in the structure of its words that express an almost infinite variety of thoughts, but analytical in the practical every-day combination of those thoughts. It is to be remarked that this change seems to have taken place once for all in the English, and is not a process still being carried on. In the study of every language vigilant watch must be kept to detect the roots of its words, and to penetrate the disguises which often hide them.

The origin of the roots themselves is hidden from us, and there is nothing at present to show why such and such letters should represent such or such an idea.

B

ENGLISH GRAMMAR.

PART I.—THE ACCIDENCE.

CHAPTER I.

THE ALPHABET.

1. The letters of the English Alphabet can be traced back to a Phoenician origin, so that we have in English a Teutonic or Indo-European language written in Semitic characters. This is due to the influence of Latin civilization on the English tribes at the time when they began to write their language. The forefathers of the English once, while they still dwelt on the shores of the Baltic and the German Ocean, were innocent of literature, and when they had occasion to write their language used rude and clumsy characters (Runes), which, though retained till comparatively late times on gravestones, were thrown aside for the Roman letters. In the same way the languages of savage Africa are being written in English-that is, in Latinletters, and will be transmitted to posterity in an alphabet of Semitic origin. There is little doubt that these Semitic forms came from Phoenicians to Greeks, and from them tɔ the other nations of Europe.

2. There are twenty-six letters in the English Alphabet, but these represent forty-three sounds; but of these twentysix, three, c, q, and x, are superfluous, so that, in fact, twentythree letters have to represent forty-three sounds; and not only this, but the five vowels, a, e, i, o, u, stand for nineteen distinct vowel sounds.